During a U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) meeting, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) offered an amendment to the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Response Act (PAHPARA) that would make the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) subject to Senate confirmation immediately.
Tuberville and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) have already successfully passed legislation that would require future CDC Directors to be confirmed by the Senate, but that legislation was altered in the final version of the package so that it does not go into effect until 2025. Tuberville’s amendment continues his broader efforts to hold the CDC accountable to the American people by making the CDC Director subject to Senate confirmation.
“Last year, this Committee considered the PREVENT Pandemics legislation,” Tuberville said. “As part of that legislation, I worked with Committee leadership to ensure a specific provision was included. That provision would make the CDC Director a Senate-confirmed position.”
“My amendment today would be in keeping with the intent of what this Committee voted to pass last year and make the CDC Director subject to Senate confirmation now. We deemed this decision important enough to pass it out of this Committee on a widely bipartisan basis back then, and I believe we should do the same today.”
Sen. Tuberville has been critical of the CDC’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Americans have truly lost so much faith in the CDC as an institution, and one of the best things we can do to set us up to defeat a future pandemic is to give Americans a voice when it comes to leadership at such an important agency.”
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has been one of the most outspoken critics of the CDC’s covid response.
“In Florida, we saw a 400% increase in the number of vaccines administered during the pandemic, but a 1700% increase in the number of adverse events reported and over a 4000% increase in the number of serious adverse events,” Dr. Ladapo said. “Is it possible that the increase in reporting is totally due to just people being more aware? I mean, it’s possible. Does it make any sense in the world to put every egg in that basket? Of course, it doesn’t make any sense in the world, particularly when there’s a plethora of different types of adverse events that have been reported in the literature.”
“So the FDA and CDC’s preference is to ignore, which is again what happened all throughout the pandemic when doctors or Ph.D. scientists would say, “Hey, I don’t think this is a good policy to forcibly mask children or to close the schools,” Ladapo continued.
Senator Tommy Tuberville was elected to the Senate in 2020. He is the senior senator representing Alabama. He is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, and HELP Committees.
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